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Topic: Mad Ebay prices (Read 4433 times)

Have I missed something? I have just bid for, and won, an Eclipse magnetic base for £3.40. About an hour later a similar one, albeit rather cleaner, sold for £23. Why on earth are the prices so different?I'm not complaining, the one that I have won looks entirely useable. This is the second that I have won on Ebay for a similar price yet many seem to sell for high prices.

i have made a living off Ebay since 1997... i have been in the auction game since 1989. The buyer is responsible for the market. The key to a good auction buying experience is knowledge of your particular interest and current market prices.

Lately the automatic computer bidding makes it just an exercise in frustration. You can be high bidder with five minutes to go and some software program makes five bids which keeps probing until they found out how much to just barely outbid you. If you look at bidding history you will see two bids in seven days and then five bids in the last five minutes. Frequently by the same bidder using a third party with high speed connections. The only thing which limits the frustration is to bid what you think the item is worth and just forget it until in the end you either win or loose. The biggest problem is if you are looking for some specific item and there are several of them available with similar end times you may end up with more than one if you bid on more than one.

I've never relied on a bid engine. I like the thrill of the chase, so to speak. I will wait until 3 or 4 seconds before the end and then bid. I've won lots of stuff this way, especially items with few bidders. Also, time of day makes a lot of difference. As already said, decide what you want to pay and bid that amount. What I don't agree with, though, is placing a bid early on. It just brings out auction fever in others.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new automatic bidding system. In the past people used third party software to snipe ebay auctions. I feel like everyone waiting for the last 5 seconds effectively makes it a silent auction so it'd make sense to just make it work that way so you can bid and forget, instead of having to set an alarm clock 10 minutes before the auction ends. For a more 'authentic' auction it'd make sense for any bids to increase the time limit by 30 seconds or so, but that'd always lead to the scumbag with the deepest pockets always winning.

I hate using ebay, especially in the way that it requires you to act like a scumbag to win them, but it is unfortunately the cheapest way to get ahold of certain items even if it is a hassle.

I'm trying to assemble a high vacuum system on the cheap. Right now i'm trying to get ahold of some high vacuum pressure gauges but they're a hot item going for high prices. It's really despairing assembling a list of potential auctions and having them all go stupidly high in the last 5 seconds.

I use Auction Sniper almost exclusively these days. Means I don't forget to bid, and only bid up to a considered sensible limit, without danger of getting carried away with auction fever. Their charges are modest and so far they've been reliable.

I don't know what "Auction Sniper" is. I just wait and bid in the last few seconds. I certainly miss some because I forget the finish time. Last year I somehow bought a car £1000 below market price because nobody else bid. Other times items that I really want go for stupid high prices. I don't understand the logic behind it. but it is fun.

Bidding in the last few minutes may be fine for some but I do not want to stay up until 1 AM to place a bid and I do not want to be tied to a computer just to be able to bid in that last few minutes. Unless there is a compelling reason to be bidding on an item like being hard to obtain or a very low price it is just not worth it to me. Saving a couple of dollars but giving up valuable time is not worth it therefore generally my approach is to wait until the last day or so and then bid my maximum and win some and loose some. I do not get excited by the thrill of the chase.

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inthesticks

The occasional great deal on e-bay is one thing but the occasional scumbag seller who does not bother to fix a minimum bid is another. On a couple of occasions I have run up against this. In one example a $10.00 bid won a new $100.00 gear box. The seller was quite willing to accept the price and shipping funds but when it came to shipping all I got was excuses. E-bay was no help, I had to threaten the guy with high bids on the rest of his items with no intention of following through before my funds were returned. Lost a couple of bucks on the exchange, not a big deal but who needs that kind of BS.

I mostly rely on "manual sniping" - typically bidding in the last 5 seconds of the auction. Even the sniper programs have a hard time with that...

I did use a sniper program once - there was a very specific item I wanted, I was in Spain at the time, and a thunderstorm was due in which I knew would kill my internet connection right at the vital time. So I registered with an apparently popular and safe sniper setup. Won the auction (the snipe worked perfectly); but a week I discovered I was apparently selling a bunch of DVD box sets... Once bitten, twice shy, I will never use any auction sniper program again, ever.

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Cheers!Ade.--Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.Or: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...Skype: adev73

Well, I'm kitted out with magnetic bases for the rest of my life. In the last two weeks I've bought three of them, the dearest £6.00 and the cheapest £3.40. The cheapest one turned out to be a real bargain, it has all the gubbins to mount a dial gauge, (dial gauges were my last mass search and purchase on ebay). It is obviously homemade but really well done. Great big knobs which make the locking an absolute wheeze, just a quick twist to nip it up.Whatever people say about Ebay it is great for bargains if you bide your time.

I spoke too soon. The third base arrived today, it is an Eclipse 903, and to my dismay I found that the button is seized. I have £6 invested in this, including postage, so it hardly seems worth returning it. Are these things able to be serviced? It appears that the label needs to be removed to get at it. Can anyone advise me before I set to with a bl**dy big 'ammer?